Black Chocobo, Wonderful Chocobo
by The Exile
Summary: A couple of years after Advent Children, Rufus is dying of Mako poisoning. He reflects over his childhood before he makes an interesting discovery.


Black Chocobo, Wonderful Chocobo 

I used to skim materia over the lake, Sometimes it floated. Sometiems it sank. Occasionally it hovered in the air when there was too much Mako in the materia. I got books about Mako from the library to work out why.

One day I fed materia to a chocobo to see what would happen. It warked like a mad thing, went completely hyper and ran as fast as the racing chocobos you see on the TV. The owner saw me and chased me away. I knew who might want the materia; the office workers in the Shinra building. They were always tired and my dad said they didn't work fast enough. I stood outside the building and sold the materia in some coffee for 50 gil a cup. A man came up and laughed at me and said that i shouldn't be playing with that stuff, I'd get Mako poisoning. I asked what Mako poisoning was but he had already ran off because it was time to start work.

I asked dad what Mako poisoning was but he hit me with an umbrella and said there was no such thing as Mako poisoning and don't let anybody tell me otherwise. The papers were lying. I asked Hojo instead. Hojo was a scientist who knew all about reactors and Mako and materia and animals. He told me all about Mako poisoning. He told me about its effects on humans and chocobos, how much Mako you could be safely exposed to, how much Mako customers and workers were exposed to and how people who worked with reactors were given special proctective clothing. He said never to tell dad that he had told me about Mako poisoning. I asked him what the two chocobos in the pen were doing. He said they were making baby chocobos. I know all about baby chocobos. Two fast chocobos sometimes made a green or blue chocobo. A green and a blue chocobo made a black chocobo. A black chocobo and a wonderful chocobo made a gold chocobo and that was the rarest, most beautiful and special chocobo of all. Hojo said I was a golden chocobo.

I played with other kids a lot. Dad didn't like it because they taught me how to steal and I let them in the Shinra building all the time because I stole all the pass codes from dad and all the security guards knew me. We used to let all the chocobos out of the lab and herd them into the offices. All the employees ran away. One day we were on the top floor of the building trying to get into dad's office when a SOLDIER procession marched past outside. I saw Sephiroth. He was cool, so fast and strong. We all thought his sword was the best sword ever, even better than Cloud's Buster Sword. I couldn't say it in front of the other kids but I had a crush on him. He was pretty even though he was a guy and a fighter. Dad caught us and threatened to send me away to a dark and scary place. I knew where it was on the map. I bought a Vivi doll directly from there once. eBay is great.

It wasn't until I was one of the oldest boys in Midgar Business School that I learned more about the feelings I had for Sephiroth. It was an all boys school and I had lots of friends to experiment with. I didn't want to be a golden chocobo any more, I wanted to be the black chocobo so I could meet a wonderful chocobo like Sephiroth. A golden chocobo looked so lonely. All it could do was win races. It was admired by humans all day long but it could never live with a special chocobo. My friend said he was worried that would happen to me when I took over my dad's job. I'd be up there on the top floor with my gil and my reactors and I'd succeed every single day of my life but humans would hate me. He said I should run away with him to Wutai Province. I said I didn't want to because then I would never see my parents and Sephiroth again.

I had a different idea. I started going into the office more. I learned how to manage Shinra and had my own office. I was appointed as vice president of Shinra. I made friends with the Turks and impressed people. Eventually they showed me where Sephiroth was. I finally had the chance to tell him my true feelings towards him. He said that everyone told him that but they stopped loving him when they learned who he truly was. He was just a fighter, just a dog. A good one, but still just a fighter. He said that he knew who really loved me. It was that crazy hobo who lived in a skip near the office and talked to reactors and secretly owned all those S Class racing chocobo. We found teh in a basement hidden behind my filing cabinet. Teh said teh was hiding because the reactors were going to blow and the world would end. I told teh not to worry because they would only end the world if they all exploded at once which was extremely unlikely to happen. I told the security guards not to horribly kill teh. I told Sephiroth I didn't love Doan. I loved him. We spent the night together.

The Turks and my friends from SOLDIER taught me a lot about how to become more aggressive. We decided together to depose my dad because he was becoming fat and weak willed. It was on my orders that Sephiroth snuck into my dad's office and killed him. He wasn't necessary any more. I had to be ruthless if I was going to be President of Shinra.

My years of reign were successful financially. Then the crystals rotated and Square turned its attention to us. That most potent of natural forces, Final Fantasy, hit Midgar like an avalanche. I saw Sephiroth die and Shinra fall. I survived somehow. But now my body was racked with Geostigma and I knew even when that was cured I was dying of Mako poisoning and I couldn't even tell anyone it existed, not even doctors, because I was President of Shinra. Hojo was dead and the reactors were gone so I couldn't ask a reactor worker how they dealt with Mako poisoning. I went for a long walk to the site of the reactors, where they once stood like giants, metal monoliths, homages to the greatest civilisation ever to walk the earth, Homo Shinra. I saw Doan standing there. Teh was talking to the ruins of a reactor.

"It's not dead." teh told me, "The leaves are dead but the roots live on."

"Doan, I..." I started coughing uncontrollably.

"You're dying." Doan stared at me with those fiery eyes.

"Can I be cured?"

"Not with that much Mako in your system."

"But you're always near a reactor? How come you're not dying?" I demanded.

"You have to be part of the lifestream in the first place to die of Mako poisoning." teh said enigmatically, "Hey, don't look so down, we've all got to die. Wouldn't you rather die a President of Shinra than live on as a no-hoper like me?"

"I... I..." my vision was going blurry, "Do you really love me."

Teh laughed, "Who told ya that? It's not me that loves ya, I was tryin' ta tell ya all this time. The one who loves ya... the one you have ta go back to... she's my best friend."

Her name is Reactor 7.

FIN


End file.
